Our Team

David Silver is the founder and CEO of Santa Fe Capital. Over the last four decades, he has raised more than $1.2 billion for hundreds of start-up entrepreneurs ranging from raw start-ups in industries as diverse as social networks such as Collision Hub, Jonesboro, AR and plastic bag producer, Tag Poly Bags, Gainesville, GA.

Another skill of David’s is leveraged buy-outs ranging from working with Sash Spencer, an individual in New York City in the purchase of the compressor division of Sunstrand Corp., a $75 million LBO to assisting Mike Williams, who owned a tiny Dallas distributor of truck parts, in purchasing Bustin Industrial Products, East Stroudsburg, PA, a manufacturer of truck ramps, steps and dozens of other parts. The more complex the situation, the more David likes to design and implement a strategic financing plan that minimizes equity give-up and maximizes the kinds and amounts of capital raised.

Prior to forming Santa Fe Capital in 1981, David worked at the Wall Street investment bank, Kuhn, Loeb & Co. and before that, he was a banker with Chase Manhattan Bank. After moving to Santa Fe , he began writing books to aid entrepreneurs in understanding the varieties of capital and the providers of each of the two dozen kinds of capital and how to approach them. Since then, he has written 32 books on entrepreneurship and finance. His books have led to articles in the Wall Street Journal, New York Times and Forbes, where he was a columnist in the mid-1990s; and to invitations to speak at numerous business schools and to groups of entrepreneurs and angel investors all over the world. USA Today wrote of David,

“If entrepreneurship has a high priest, its name is David Silver.”

In addition, he has assisted numerous cities in launching angel capital clubs and he initiated the “five minute forum” still used by many of those groups. In 1996, the Clinton White House invited David to speak to a roomful of more than three hundred fifty women entrepreneurs based on his wildly popular book “Enterprising Women”. His technology transfer of a flow cytometry technology from Los Alamos National Labs in 1983 was recognized in a speech by Ronald Reagan as the first such transfer from a national laboratory to an entrepreneurial company.

David was born in Knoxville, TN and he teaches entrepreneurship at the University of Tennessee. He earned AB and MBA degrees from the University of Chicago.